This week we welcome Karen Marston, a painter living and working in Brooklyn. Her work is on view now through March 20 at the Owen James Gallery in SoHo in a solo exhibition titled “Fire Season.” Other recent solos include: 2017’s “To Embrace the Whole Sky with the Mind,” at Station Independent Projects on the Lower East Side, and “Demeter’s Wrath” in 2016 at Owen James Gallery.
Marston served as President of the Board of Trustees of NURTUREart Non-Profit for over ten years, where she was instrumental in the opening of the NURTUREart Gallery in Brooklyn, project managed the development of the online Registry for Artists and Curators, and hosted eleven seasons of Muse Fuse, an informal monthly art salon with many notable guest speakers from the forefront of the art world.
Originally from California, she earned her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and participated in the A.I.C.A. New York Studio Program.
Marston says, “For the past several years I have been painting natural and not so natural disasters, triggered by the near simultaneous explosions of the oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and the volcano in Iceland. These images became an external manifestation of an apprehensive mood fed by a growing litany of frightening catastrophes, a conflation of many destructive crises consuming the world. The scope of this continuing exploration broadened to include more volcanos, raging forest fires, hurricanes and tornadoes. All larger and more frightening than ever, amplified rather than tamed by modernity, I have been mesmerized by the power of these elemental threats.”
See more of Marsten’s work on her website, Instagram and at Owen James Gallery.
